Van Jones had to go

There's lots of angst on the liberal-left about the resignation over the weekend of Van Jones, the administration's green-jobs czar who had signed a "truther" petition in 2004. The fear is that Obama "cut him loose" and showed weakness and that this kind of thing will only embolden the crazy Glenn Beck as he seeks more scalps.

There is some reason for concern here, but Jones had to go. He painted a target on his back by signing that petition. It's not that the petition demanded an investigation. That's fine. It is simply and only this phrase, demanding "immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

A person who implicitly suggests that, which he did by signing the thing, can still do a lot of productive things in society, but serving as a presidential appointee just isn't one of them. If you work for the president, you work ultimately for the American people. If you take an action suggesting you hold a view that the clear majority of those people -- not just tea-baggers and birthers, but millions of people who voted for and still support Obama -- would find offensive, you shouldn't be working there.

Beck is indeed after other scalps, and he's temporarily emboldened by this. But I think there's a fairly clear and bright line here. Jones did something that made it really, really easy for conservatives to scream about. That won't be the case with everyone.

That said, I think Obama should confront this Beckish craziness directly at some point. The target audience for such a confrontation is not conservatives, who'll never change, but liberals and especially independents, who'll see a guy standing up to his opponents. There's no stopping this madness, but there is such a thing as containing it.